School funding plan takes another hit

A school funding plan designed to more fairly cut $4 billion from public schools got derailed Monday night because of a procedural defect with the legislation that sent supporters scrambling to salvage.

The legislative session ends on Monday.

House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, said he and other legislative leaders would try to save the pertinent parts of school funding by attaching them to other bills.

Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands

Without a plan, Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott would have to use proration to cut funding to the state’s 1,039 school districts. Proration would cut all school districts proportionately. Some lawmakers wanted better-funded school districts to take a bigger portion of the funding cuts,

Also left pending are the school reform measures, such as larger class sizes, teacher pay cuts and unpaid leave for teachers and other school district staff members. Teacher groups have been fighting the proposed school reform measures.

School districts want the flexibility of teacher furloughs and pay cuts to spare them of additional teacher and school staff firings necessary to absorb the budget cuts.

“If you look at the long history of school finance, you will find there’s many twists and turns,” Eissler said.

Trying to fix the school funding system in the final days of a legislative session is a difficult assignment, he said.

“People want to make sure they make right decisions,” Eissler said.

Earlier in the day, some lawmakers expressed discomfort at the prospect of debating the school finance measure – and about 70 amendments – into the wee morning hours.

A school funding bill is necessary to account for the $4 billion in cuts to public education.

There were at least three different school funding plans on the House floor.

“I am really concerned how it will affect our ISDs back home and how we can make an educated decision in a very short period of time,” Keffer said. “We’re taking a lot of steps on faith.”
Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, who had tried to rescue the school finance bill said concerns were valid because the state spends about $37 billion on public education in the two-year budget.

“We have to be very, very careful. It’s a large amount of money. We can’t make mistakes without dire consequences,” Aycock said.

Eissler said he wanted to develop a temporary plan for dealing with the $4 billion budget cut and then “take time” before the 2013 legislative session to propose a more permanent fix.

However, for the past few decades, lawmakers have been unable to reform public school funding without a court order.

“(Legislators) seem to be more comfortable with (a court order), don’t they? Don’t we?” Eissler acknowledged. “It’s hard to get a school finance bill out because there are so many decisions you have to make.”

Rep. Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas, a savvy expert on House rules, called the “point of order” on SB 1581 when she alleged the rule-making authority outlined in the bill analysis did not match the actual bill. It didn’t take long for House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, and parliamentarian Chris Griesel to validate the point of order – which Eissler described as “a typo.”

“Somebody – play Taps,” Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said in earshot of Eissler when he lost his school finance measure.